CIO-SP4 protests drive yet another extension

With the recompete of its $50 billion CIO-SP4 contract mired in protests, the National Institutes of Health's IT acquisition arm has extended the incumbent vehicle another six months.

CIO-SP3 was slated to expire at the end of April but will now run through to Oct. 29, 2024.

NIH's IT Acquisition and Assessment Center also said that any orders placed against CIO-SP3 can have a five-year term, meaning a task order awarded on the last day can run through Oct. 29, 2029.

The agency began working on the extension in February with an option for another six months.

A total of 17 companies have filed protests at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. They have been consolidated into one case under Judge Thompson M. Dietz.

All of the substantial filings are sealed so far, including the proposed redacted versions of the complaint and a motion for an injunction.

CIO-SP4 is a government-wide acquisition vehicle for IT solutions and services and is in its third year of protest troubles.

Most of the complaints filed at the Government Accountability Office have dealt with how NITAAC used a self-scoring methodology to eliminate proposals. The protesters argued that NITAAC set an arbitrary threshold for companies to surpass.

NITAAC took several corrective actions to address those concerns, but apparently to no avail.

Companies turned to the courts earlier this year when NITAAC began notifying preliminary winners as well as losers. The agency hasn’t updated its web page since Jan. 17 when it announced the start of those notifications.

NITAAC has asked the court for and been given a 49-day extension to its deadline for filing a status report and the administrative record of the procurement. The new deadline is May 31.

The 17 protesters at the court are:

• Futron (the case under which all others are consolidated)
• A Square Group
• Analytica
• Astor & Sanders
• Audacious Inquiry
• DevTech Systems
• HagerV3
• Inalab Consulting
• Mission 1st
• Objective Function Systems
• Optimal Solutions
• RCHP
• Sky Solutions
• Systems Plus
• Trigent Solutions
• Vetconnect
• Xfinion